Muslim Extremists

Egyptian security officials disclosed Wednesday that they are holding at least 750 suspected Muslim extremists linked to a group advocating the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak's government. Police sources said the suspects have been undergoing questioning for several weeks. The sources said the suspects will be charged soon with forming an illegal organization to overthrow the government.

More than 500 suspected Muslim extremists were rounded up in the Cairo area for questioning in the attempted assassination of Information Minister Safwat Sharif outside his home Tuesday. The minister's left hand was injured by flying glass, and his driver and bodyguard suffered serious bullet wounds.

Either Kennedy's 444 days in captivity have softened his brain, or he is another classic example of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy that seems to characterize much of liberal education these days. Like many multiculturalists, Kennedy seems to slaver over any barbarism that emanates out of the Third World, yet at the same time casts only a critical and jaundiced eye toward his own moral and political traditions. How, may I ask, Mr. Kennedy, do fundamentalist Muslims think they are going to acquire self-respect and self-determination?

Police raided a suspected Muslim extremist's hide-out in the troubled city of Asyut and killed him in an exchange of gunfire, a spokesman said. He also said 42 suspected extremists were rounded up in the city, 200 miles south of Cairo, and eight others were detained in the neighboring provinces of Sohag, El Minya and Qena.

In a surge of bloody attacks by Islamic extremists on Egypt's police forces and the Coptic Christian minority, 13 people have been killed this week, 12 of them Copts. The most recent attack, in Egypt's southern Asyut province on Monday, was part of a 2-month-old dispute over a house. Police have rounded up scores of known extremists but said only three are prime suspects. The attacks are rattling the country's stability and security.

Once, his captors prayed for forgiveness. Then they whipped Thomas M. Sutherland until he screamed in agony. He did not cry. He forgave them. And as he told the heart-wrenching story Wednesday of his 2,347 days in chains, it was clear that the Muslim extremists who took away his freedom, his sunlight and even his faith in God were unable to imprison something else: his spirit.

A blind sheik who heads the radical Islamic organization believed responsible for the assassination last month of the Speaker of Egypt's Parliament was mistakenly granted a visa to travel to New York in an apparent attempt to raise money from American Muslim groups shortly before the killing, according to Egyptian security sources.

Egyptian police shot and killed two Muslim extremists Saturday and arrested six others as suspects in the assassination of parliamentary Speaker Rifaat Mahgoub two weeks ago, authorities said. Three police officers were wounded in a gun battle before detaining members of an Muslim group said to be the outlawed Jihad (Holy War). Two fellow extremists were killed in another gun battle in Cairo later in the day. A third extremist and a police officer were wounded in that clash.

Massive unrest in the Tadzhikistan capital of Dushanbe toppled the leadership of the entire Central Asian republic Thursday, and the deputy prime minister turned against the government to head a "provisional people's committee." In the first reported outburst of Islamic fundamentalism in the mainly Sunni Muslim republic, extremists mobbed a bus and attacked Tadzhik girls because their heads were uncovered, Radio Moscow's Interfax news service said.

Some employers have the audacity, arrogance and gall to establish a dress code that prohibits male employees from wearing beards or a mustache. This is a flagrant example of the denial of personal freedom. Yes, I too can understand the importance of being well-groomed. But denying an employee the right to grow a beard or mustache is simply ridiculous and discriminatory. We all know that a face "with" or "without" facial hair has no relevance to job performance and capabilities.